Path of Destruction
by PerfectCosima
Summary: Maleficent if the characters were replaced with Carmilla characters.
1. Chapter 1

Carmilla laughed giddily as the snowflakes fell, coating her dark brown hair with a fine layer of white. Her leathery wings stretched out on each side of her as she swooped over the pond, watching the other creatures below her playing together.

_Thud._

Suddenly Carmilla found herself, careening toward the ground, barely able to steer herself into a stretch of soft powder on the bank. Everyone froze as they watched her shake off the snow and begin to move her hands, icy blue light forming into a ball.

_Smack._

The freshly made snowball left her hands and hit it's target, breaking the spell and sending everyone back to their original ruckus, all of the fae wanting the girl to be on their team as the snowball fight waged on.

* * *

"Carmilla, have you heard?"

"Heard what?" Carmilla asked the tiny fairy fluttering in the air in front of her.

"About-" Perry's reply was cut off by a hand clapped over her mouth.

"It's my turn to tell the news!" LaFontaine complained, struggling to stop Perry from speaking.

"You told last time, LaF!"

"But I'm the unofficial truth teller! This is my job!"

"Fine, L_annoy_Fontaine, tell her the news."

Carmilla watched on with impatient amusement as the pixies argued, relieved when the male of the group finally stepped in.

"There's a human," Kirsch said, unable to take the suspense a moment longer. His outburst sent them into a silence, shocked on Carmilla's part, and angry on the part of the other pixies.

"Yes, a human!" LaF chimed in, confirming his statement. "At the crystal falls!"

* * *

Carmilla cautiously approached the falls, detecting movement behind it, the sound of blood obvious to her ears even from a distance such as she was away.

"Is it such a threat?" she asked the tree standing guard with his spear. When she received an uncertain reply, she ventured forward, close enough to communicate without shouting.

"Hello?" she called out. "If you could please just return the crystal and tell me who you are."

"Will you not hurt me if I do?" The voice that responded was feminine and airy, not what Carmilla had expected from one who was brave enough to venture into the moors, and at the peak of winter no less.

Carmilla smiled slightly, gesturing for the guards to lower their weapons. "It is but a girl, I believe," she said, then again addressed the person behind the falls. "A thief has no need to be punished if the stolen object is returned," she said, her heart beating wildly as she approached the falls. "Give the stone to me, and show yourself, and as long as you leave us in peace you shall have no need to fear us."

When the golden haired girl stepped out from behind the icy sheet of water, Carmilla's powers sparked unconsciously, sending ripples of magic from her fingertips into the ground. The energy between them was magnetic, Carmilla's mouth was dry, her brain went blank, and when the human girl's warm hands brushed against her own chilly ones to return the crystal, she felt something, something that she barely had a word for, for nothing could describe that connection.

* * *

"If I'd known you were going to throw it away, I would have kept it."

"I didn't throw it away," Carmilla replied, shocked at the accusation. "I returned it. I brought it home."

She led the girl the rest of the way to the border, to the large stones that marked the border between their different worlds.

"That will be my castle one day," the girl confided, taking Carmilla by surprise.

"You're royalty then? You live there?"

"No, I live in a barn... my parents are dead."

"As are mine."

Their eyes locked, and the pain found within was a reflection, although in the human's eyes there was a sort of longing that Carmilla didn't have. A human longing, for something tangible, an elegant greed that Carmilla's own kind didn't experience.

"Who are you?" the girl asked finally, her curiosity overpowering her sense.

"Vampyre." If Carmilla expected her words to strike the same fear into the girl as 'human' did to her, she was disappointed.

"That's your name?"

"No, erm, Carmilla." She was flustered, surprised at the simple exchange, and embarrassed for forgetting her manners. "And you are?"

"Elle."


	2. Chapter 2

Carmilla had thought that she'd never see Elle again, so when the news came that the girl was at the boundary, calling out her name, she was was shocked.

"Carmilla!"

"Yes?"

The girl whirled around, not having heard Carmilla's silent descent behind her.

"You're back."

"Yes."

"It's dangerous."

"I know."

A hint of a smile graced Carmilla's face, and she glanced over at her home, weighing her options.

"Come with me," she said finally, turning and walking at a brisk pace into the trees.

* * *

At first, Carmilla's friends were shy around the newcomer, but as she skated over the frozen pond, flinging snowballs with the rest of them, they came to be relaxed around her.

Carmilla was experiencing the same change, albeit stronger. She felt her heart warming to the girl, the friend that she had always dreamed of. It was a moment of sadness when they parted later that day.

* * *

"Goodbye, Elle," Carmilla said, a sad smile on her face. "Will you come back and visit me?"

"Of course!" Elle looked surprised at the suggestion that she would abandon her new friend. "If you'll have me."

"It would be my pleasure," Carmilla replied, watching her friend walk off, watching her pause, watching her turn around and bite her lip as she held back a question.

"Carmilla?" she asked hesitantly. "Could I... could I maybe feel your wings? I don't mean to impose, I mean they're just so beautiful, and I was wondering, and i'm so sorry, it's so silly and rude of me. Of course you wouldn-"

"Okay." Carmilla cut off the rambling girl with a simple acquiescence, startling her.

"You mean I can?"

"Yes." For Carmilla, this was an expression of trust, letting this almost stranger touch the most important part of her, the wings that let her fly. Yet somehow it seemed fitting, for she did trust her, without reason, against reason even. She trusted her with her life.

The sensation was both odd and lovely for both, until suddenly Carmilla cried out, feeling a searing pain. "Do you have silver?"

"Just my ring," replied Elle, pulling her hand back in confusion, displaying the shiny band on her finger.

"Silver burns vampyres," Carmilla explained, reaching back and gently massaging the wound on her leathery wing.

"Oh." Elle didn't even think twice before pulling off her prized possession, throwing it as hard as she could away from them. "I'm sorry."

Carmilla watched on in amazement as the girl walked off with a wave and a promise to be back soon. Nobody had ever done anything like that for her before, something so selfless, thoughtful. She waded through the grass and retrieved the ring, ignoring the circle that it was burning into her hand as she brought it back to her tree, her home, to safeguard.

* * *

And she did return, the beautiful maiden with the golden hair and high ambitions. She returned, and each time Carmilla felt herself falling a little bit further, deeper in love, until she could no longer deny to herself that that was in fact what it was, love. Elle had even seen her feed, seen the sacrifice of an ounce of blood from the creatures that loved her, made painless by the special anesthetic, that when given from both her fangs, not only numbed, but made the event almost pleasurable and humane. Still she stayed, stayed even when she saw the drops of blood dripping from the mouth of the girl who never aged.

So it wasn't a stretch when their lips met in the glade, where they lay under the trees, over half a year after they had met. It was natural, the only progression that made sense, and Carmilla was sure that they would be together forever, the concept of mortality to one as powerful as herself seeming silly and artificial, a joke that the humans had made up to make the fae doubt them.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

* * *

Elle aged and drifted away, her visits becoming less and less often, and Carmilla not understanding why she had to go, what importance there could be of anything in the world beyond her boundaries, not understanding her love's longing for more out of life than love and happiness. While Elle grew taller and older, and more beautiful, Carmilla stayed young, an unearthliness about her that only grew as her power did, and she developed into the role she was meant to have, the one of guardian of the moors.


	3. Chapter 3

It's been months since Carmilla had last seen Elle. So when the reports of humans at the boundary came, she flew off expecting to see her lover, not an army.

* * *

"You are not my king." The anger on the human's face was apparent, and she could see how he thought he might win a battle against her, despite her wings. She looked like a teen. It was a curse to appear forever young, no matter how aged she might be, yet at the same time a blessing. For she knew what he didn't, of the army she had hidden in the trees, among the trees, of the trees. The army that, as soon as the enemy came charging forward, rose to meet them, slamming them to the ground, decimating them.

She took the king herself, dive bombing him, knocking him off his horse with her feet.

"You will never be my king."

* * *

"When I became a king, I made a promise to you that I would conquer the moors. Now, as I lay here dying, I make another. The wretched beast who has taken my life shall not be allowed to get away with this. You must make sure of this. And as a show of my thanks, whoever slays the beast shall have the greatest prize I can give, the hand of my son to give to a woman, no matter how lowly of birth. In return for a death, your daughters shall have the chance to rule over the kingdom, to be someone."

As she attended to the king, wiping his brow, and giving him sips of water, Elle heard. And she knew what had to be done.

* * *

"Carmilla!" her voice was soft, but she knew that the vamp would come, she had never failed to in the 10 years that she had known her.

"What are you doing here, Elle? The forest isn't safe. Everyone's on edge." Carmilla was suspicious, a visit in the middle of the night was unheard of, nevermind the fact that it had been so long since the human had visited at all.

"I had to warn you, Carm," Elle replied, the look on her face innocent, naive. "The king means to kill you. He's set a ransom. Tomorrow, every man in the kingdom shall be out searching for you."

"I can escape them." There wasn't a hint of doubt in Carmilla's voice.

"I know… I just… I didn't want you to be surprised. I was worried about you, Carmilla."

* * *

Carmilla's suspicions faded away as the talked, walking in the moonlight. By the time that their stories were told, and she was caught up on her life outside the moors, they had returned to their own ways, hand in hand as they settled down by the riverbank, Carmilla resting against a rock, Elle's head on her lap. She took sips of the drink that Elle had provided as she stroked that beautiful golden hair, not noticing as she became more and more drowsy, finally drifting off to sleep.

* * *

"Carmilla?" Elle's voice was soft and sad as she got only crickets in reply, moving cautiously for her bag, and pulling out a knife. "Silver burns vampyres," she murmured quietly to herself, stroking the blade. She pressed the tip against Carmilla's ribcage, but when she looked at Carmilla's face, she couldn't do the deed, breaking down in sobs.

She dragged the unconscious fae to the hunter's pit, just within the boundaries of the moors. There she steeled herself once again, this time placing the blade against the base of Carmilla's wings.  
"Just a monster, a monster. It has to be done." She kept reassuring herself as she severed the wings, then moved on to the final prize, the other means of proof.

"A monster," she repeated as she removed the fang, gasping at the scream of pain that accompanied the twist of the pliers, shoving the slowly awakening girl into the deep pit.

Tears filled her eyes like dirt to the hole as she filled it in, ignoring the screams, relieved when they finally trailed off, Carmilla's voice becoming too hoarse to scream for help, too tired to stay awake.

* * *

"My king."

"What is this?"

"I have avenged you."


	4. Chapter 4

Carmilla's anguished screams reverberated through the ground from where she lay buried, put there by the one she trusted the most, the one who she had risked everything for. The word rang through her mind, in a punishment just as fierce as her missing wings and incisor._ Monster. Monster. Monster._

* * *

It had taken her years to rise to the surface, to surpass the stone foundation that Elle had placed over her burial ground. Her body was weak, and her throat ached for blood, an urge that was all she felt, all she cared about. The same deer that had once eaten from her hand was now her meal, as she sank her fang into it's throat, with no care for the pain, only the primal urge for sustenance, and for revenge.

* * *

She saved the bat from the netting, needing wings, needing information.

"I'm in your debt. I am your servant."

"What are you called?"

"Will, m'lady."

* * *

"It's a girl!"

Elle had married the prince of the castle, a result of her dowry, priceless mementos of vengeance in the form of a pair of wings and a sharpened tooth.

Now she had a child, a baby girl that was reportedly as radiant as the sun, and just as beautiful.

* * *

The day of the baby's christening, Carmilla entered the castle with everyone else, blending in before making her grand entrance.

When she saw Elle and Dean seated on their thrones, hand in hand as they watched the proceedings, her eyes hardened, and all of her doubts about her plans went out the window.

* * *

She smirked as her tiny brethren flitted about above the crib. Beauty and song, how pedestrian. A flick of her wrist was all she needed to knock Kirsch, Perry, and LaFontaine into the chest as she strode forward, black dress trailing behind her, scepter tapping on the marbled floor at her side.

"Carmilla, what are you doing here?" Elle demanded, her ferocity surprising the man who sat by her side.

"Why I've come to bestow my gift, of course," Carmilla replied, striding over to the cradle and peering down at the child. "It's a lovely celebration for such a beautiful princess. Although I do admit that I was heartbroken when I wasn't extended an invitation."

"You're not welcome here!"

"Oh dear, what an awkward situation…"

"Darling…" King Dean said warningly, glancing anxiously over at the fairy that was approaching his young daughter. "We don't want to offend our guest." He turned his head, addressing Carmilla. "Lady Carmilla, please excuse our impertinence, we meant no offense."

"Oh, none taken," Carmilla said, although what the King perceived as a friendly smile, the Queen recognized as something much more dangerous. "I wouldn't dream on leaving without bestowing my gift on the darling princess."

Elle stared on helplessly as Carmilla reached out to stroke the face of the young baby.

"Ah, Princess Laura," Carmilla murmured, running her deep red fingernail over the child's cheek. "What gift could be good enough for a child born to parents such as yours?" She then spoke up, addressing the entire room. "Listen well, you all! The princess will indeed grow in grace and beauty. But before the sunset on her sixteenth birthday, she will prick her finger on a spindle of a spinning wheel, and she will fall into a sleep like death forever! No power on Earth shall be able to remove this curse!"

"No!" Elle's voice rang out desperately as she moved toward Carmilla, only to be stopped by the magic that was shooting from Carmilla's hands like purple light. "Please," she pleaded. "Please don't hurt my daughter."

Carmilla paused, taking in the woman in front of her. "I like you begging," she commented, a smile playing at her lips. "Again."

Elle bowed down to her former lover, tears in her eyes. "Please. Do anything you want to me, just don't kill my baby girl."

"Very well," Carmilla acquiesced, abruptly turning away from the scene and back toward their audience, who were gaping at the sight of their monarch bowing to the vampire from the moor. "The princess shall be able to be awakened."

"Thank y-" The King was cut off by the cruelly smiling vampire.

"By true love's kiss."

With that, a sudden purple glow filled the room, a dark cloud seeping through the air, making it almost impossible to see. Elle rushed over to her child, relieved to see that she was still there.

When it cleared, Carmilla was gone.


End file.
